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Course 20 · Lesson 1.1

What spiritual formation means in Scripture and tradition

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 20 outline

Module 1: Spiritual Formation and the Doctrines Behind Prayer

  1. What spiritual formation means in Scripture and tradition
  2. How the Trinity, the Incarnation and grace shape Christian prayer
  3. A map of the prayer traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant
  4. Ways and stages of growth: purgation, illumination and union, and their critics

Module 2: The Desert and Early Monasticism

  1. Anthony, Athanasius and the beginning of the desert movement
  2. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers: how to read them
  3. John Cassian and the eight thoughts that trouble the mind
  4. From the hermit to the community: Pachomius, Basil and Benedict

Module 3: Praying with Scripture and with the Church

  1. Lectio divina: its history and the four movements
  2. The Psalms as the prayer of the church
  3. The Divine Office and the Liturgy of the Hours: hours, texts and structure
  4. Using the daily office alone, and the Protestant daily prayer tradition

Module 4: Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer

  1. Stillness and the prayer of the heart in the early Eastern church
  2. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its sources and its history
  3. Gregory Palamas and the fourteenth century controversy over light and energies
  4. Practice and cautions: the role of a guide and the warnings of the tradition

Module 5: Fasting, Discernment and Spiritual Direction

  1. Fasting in Scripture and in the three traditions
  2. Asceticism: its purpose, its dangers and its abuses
  3. The discernment of spirits from Antony and Cassian to Ignatius of Loyola
  4. Spiritual direction: the elder, the confessor, the pastor and the mentor

Module 6: Contemplation and Action

  1. Mary and Martha: how the church has read the two lives
  2. Prayer that issues in service: Benedict, Brother Lawrence and the Reformers on vocation
  3. When practice goes wrong: pride, quietism and spiritual experience without doctrine

Module 7: Building a Rule of Life

  1. What a rule of life is, and what the word rule meant for Benedict
  2. Choosing practices: Scripture, prayer, fasting, rest and service
  3. Dryness, failure and starting again
  4. Reviewing and adjusting a rule over time

All courses

Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 1.1

What you will learn

  • Define spiritual theology and spiritual formation in plain language.
  • Trace the idea of being shaped into the likeness of Christ through the New Testament.
  • Compare how Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians describe growth in holiness.
  • Explain why the tradition treats formation as the work of God that a person cooperates with, not a self-improvement project.

The big idea

Spiritual formation is the long process by which a Christian is shaped into the likeness of Christ. The New Testament describes it as something God does by the Spirit, and also as something the believer is called to take part in. The three great traditions agree on that much and differ on how to describe the relation between God’s work and human effort. Spiritual theology is the study of this process: how belief and prayer, grace and practice, fit together over a whole life.

Key terms

Spiritual theology
The branch of Christian thought that studies how believers grow in prayer and holiness, and how doctrine and lived practice shape each other.
Spiritual formation
The process of being shaped, over time, into the likeness of Christ. The phrase is common in modern writing, though the idea is ancient.
Sanctification
Being made holy. Some traditions use the word for the whole lifelong process, and some use it for a particular stage or act of God.
Grace
God’s free favor and help, given to people who have not earned it.
Theosis (deification)
The Eastern Christian teaching that human beings are called to share in the life of God by grace, without becoming God in essence.
Ascesis
From a Greek word for training. It names the disciplines, such as fasting, vigils and prayer, by which a Christian is trained.
Synergy
A Greek word for working together. Eastern writers use it for the cooperation of God and the human will in growth.

Background

Most modern Christians use the word formation without thinking about its history. The word is recent in this sense, but the question behind it is as old as the New Testament: how does a person who has begun to follow Christ become the kind of person Christ calls them to be? Spiritual theology is the field that takes up that question. It differs from systematic theology, which asks what is true about God, creation and salvation, and from ethics, which asks what people ought to do. Spiritual theology asks how a human life is changed over years by prayer, worship, Scripture, repentance and love.

The New Testament speaks of this change in several ways. Paul tells the Romans not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Romans 12:2). He tells the Galatians that he is in labor until Christ is formed in them (Galatians 4:19). He writes to the Corinthians that believers, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). The letter to the Ephesians speaks of growing to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). These texts describe a process, and they place its center in Christ rather than in the believer’s own ideals.

The same Scriptures also call believers to effort. Paul tells the Philippians to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, and in the next sentence says that it is God who works in them to will and to do (Philippians 2:12-13). That pairing is the heart of the matter. Christians have never denied either half. They have disagreed about how the halves relate, and the disagreement divides much of the history covered in this course.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Formation begins with what God has done

In every tradition, growth in holiness starts from a gift. Baptism, faith or the call of God comes first, and the life of formation follows. Paul writes that believers are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works (Ephesians 2:10). The works come after the making.

This keeps formation from being a ladder a person climbs to reach God. The tradition describes it as a response to a God who has already come near.

Step 2: Formation is a shaping into Christ

The pattern is Christ himself. Paul speaks of putting on Christ (Romans 13:14) and of having the mind that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). Formation therefore means growing in the habits of humility, mercy, truthfulness and love that the Gospels show in him.

This is why spiritual writers across the centuries return to the Gospels and the Psalms. The goal is a character, and techniques serve that goal only as long as they point toward it.

Step 3: Formation involves human cooperation

The believer is not passive. The New Testament gives commands: pray, watch, forgive, give, put away anger. The early monastic writers built on these commands and spoke of training, using the Greek word ascesis.

The central question is how effort and grace fit together. The next step shows how the three traditions answer.

Step 4: The traditions describe the process differently

Catholic teaching describes sanctification as the work of grace received through the sacraments and lived in prayer and charity. The Second Vatican Council taught that all Christians, whatever their state of life, are called to holiness (Lumen Gentium, chapter 5). Catholic teaching holds that grace enables real merit, because God’s gift makes the believer’s response truly the believer’s own.

Orthodox teaching speaks of theosis: a lifelong sharing, by grace, in the life of God. Orthodox writers stress synergy, the cooperation of God and the human will, within the life of the church and its mysteries (the Orthodox word for sacraments).

Protestant teaching generally distinguishes justification, God’s declaration that a sinner is righteous in Christ, from sanctification, the Spirit’s continuing work of making the believer holy. Reformed writers stress that sanctification is wholly the work of God’s grace, in which the believer is active. Methodist and Wesleyan writers speak of growth in holiness and of Christian perfection understood as perfect love. Their meaning of perfection is disputed by other Protestants.

Step 5: Formation is slow and communal

All three traditions hold that formation takes years, includes setbacks and happens among other believers. Worship, the reading of Scripture in company, correction and service are part of it. A private program of prayer that has no place for these is, in the judgment of nearly every tradition, an incomplete form of it.

  1. What do I mean when I say I want to grow spiritually, and could I describe the goal in terms of Christ’s character?
  2. Do I think of growth mainly as something I achieve or something I receive?
  3. Which New Testament passage about transformation speaks most directly to my situation?
  4. Who is shaping me now, and through which habits, media and relationships?
  5. Where do I treat prayer as a technique rather than a relationship?
  6. How would my closest friends know whether I am growing in love?

Examples

Formation as gift and effort

A man begins praying each morning after a hard year. At first he treats it as a project and keeps score. After a time he notices that his anger at work has softened, though he did nothing aimed at it. He recognizes the change as something received while he did his part. (A constructed example.)

Formation without a center

A woman collects practices from many sources: breathing exercises, journaling, a few psalms, a retreat. She finds them pleasant but cannot say what they are for. When she asks what shape of life they are training her toward, she has no answer. The traditions would say the practices need a goal, Christ, to become formation. (A constructed example.)

Different vocabularies, shared concern

A Catholic, an Orthodox and a Baptist Christian discuss holiness. One speaks of grace and the sacraments, one of theosis, one of the Spirit’s sanctifying work. They discover that all three insist God starts the work and that Christ is the pattern. They differ over means and vocabulary. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching holds that God’s grace, given in baptism and nourished by the sacraments, prayer and charity, makes a person truly holy and not merely declared holy. The Church teaches a universal call to holiness: the layperson, the priest and the monk are all called to it, in different ways.

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians describe the goal of the Christian life as theosis, communion with God and sharing in his life by grace. They cite 2 Peter 1:4, which speaks of becoming partakers of the divine nature. They hold that this never makes a person God by nature. It is lived in the church’s liturgy, the mysteries and ascetic practice.

Reformed Protestant

Reformed writers such as Calvin distinguish justification from sanctification but never separate them. A person united to Christ receives both. Sanctification is by grace, and the believer works at it through the means God gives: word, sacrament, prayer and the church’s discipline.

Wesleyan Protestant

John Wesley taught that the Christian life is growth in love, with the hope of being made perfect in love in this life. Wesley’s meaning of perfection excludes sinless perfection in the ordinary sense. Other Protestants question how far such perfection is attainable.

Scholarly view

Historians note that the phrase spiritual formation became common in English only in recent generations, and that earlier writers used words such as holiness, sanctification, the spiritual life or the way of perfection. They also note that the differences between traditions about grace and effort are real and not only differences in wording.

Why it matters

Everything else in this course assumes a view of what prayer and discipline are for. Without that view, practices turn into techniques that serve the self, and the history of the church can look like a pile of unrelated customs. Seeing formation as being shaped into Christ by God’s grace gives the practices a purpose, explains why every tradition prizes humility and love above striking experience, and prepares the student to read old authors on their own terms.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Spiritual formation is a modern wellness idea.

Correction: The phrase is modern, but the concern is found in Paul’s letters and in every century since. The tradition always spoke of holiness, not wellbeing.

Misunderstanding: If grace does the work, effort does not matter.

Correction: Philippians 2:12-13 joins both. Every tradition teaches cooperation of some kind. They differ on how to explain it.

Misunderstanding: If effort matters, a person earns salvation through practice.

Correction: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant teaching all say salvation begins as God’s gift. They describe merit and works differently, but none says a person starts the journey alone.

Misunderstanding: Formation is only about private prayer.

Correction: The New Testament places growth in the body of Christ, among believers who teach, correct and bear with one another (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Knowledge check

What is the difference between spiritual theology and systematic theology?

Systematic theology organizes what Christians believe about God, creation, Christ and salvation. Spiritual theology asks how those beliefs are lived over time in prayer, worship and holiness, and how practice in turn shapes belief. The two depend on each other, but they begin from different questions.

Which passage pairs God’s work and human effort, and what does it say?

Philippians 2:12-13 tells believers to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, and says that God is the one working in them to will and to do. The passage holds both halves together without reducing one to the other.

What does theosis mean, and what does it not mean?

Theosis is the Eastern teaching that human beings are called to share in the life of God by grace. It does not mean that a person becomes God in essence or nature. Orthodox writers insist the Creator and the creature remain distinct.

How do many Protestants distinguish justification from sanctification?

Justification is God’s declaration that a sinner is righteous because of Christ. Sanctification is the Spirit’s continuing work of making the believer holy in life. Many Protestants hold that the two always go together but are not the same thing.

Why do the traditions treat formation as communal?

The New Testament pictures growth inside the body of Christ, with teachers, correction and shared worship (Ephesians 4). The traditions therefore treat worship, fellowship and service as part of formation, and see isolated practice as incomplete.

Think it through

  1. What picture of the finished Christian life has shaped your idea of growth, and where did it come from?
  2. When have you seen change in yourself that you did not engineer?
  3. Which of the three vocabularies, sanctification, theosis or the way of perfection, seems closest to your own, and why?
  4. What would you want a practice to be aimed at before you began it?

Independent assignment

A statement of purpose

In your notebook, write 300 to 400 words. Read Romans 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Philippians 2:12-13. In your own words, explain what you think growth into Christ means and how God’s work and your effort relate in it. Then write a short paragraph on where you find this hardest to believe or practice. Keep it for later lessons. Do not send it to anyone.

Further study